


The Fated Flap of a Butterfly Wing

by fairmanor



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coffee, Conversations, Drinking, Light Angst, M/M, New York, Pre-Schitt's Creek, alternate first meeting, late-night, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26879503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairmanor/pseuds/fairmanor
Summary: “Wait. I don’t think I caught your name,” Patrick says.David looks at him. He wants to say it; he wants to say the name, and its accompanying surname. The name that has filled him both with pride and embarrassment depending on the circumstances. The name that is his key to the city, his password. It’s how he makes friends. It’s how he loses them. God, he’s so tired.“No, you didn’t,” David says. And he unhooks his jacket from Patrick’s finger, making sure not to touch his hand, and he leaves.Though neither of them remembers it, Schitt’s Creek isn’t the first place that David and Patrick met. Years before, they have a singular unlikely encounter in New York City at night.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 10
Kudos: 119





	The Fated Flap of a Butterfly Wing

**Author's Note:**

> \- hey all! I'm not sure where this idea came from but I like that it's canon compliant. There are so many random encounters that we have in our lives that we forget about, and them meeting in New York is an astronomical chance, but...that's still a chance. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> \- TW for mild injury.

~2012~

New York at night, no matter the time of year, is fucking weird.

It’s like three cities in one. Three, four, five _worlds_ in one, a tangle of lives that ring so different yet so similar; a mess of hands that don’t want to be interlinked. The sonorous chorus of eight million people is so loud that it’s impossible to hear anyone, impossible to listen. Eight million. It’s so _many_. The smell of food lingers strong in the air – it could be Lebanese, or Moroccan, or some cheap fusion of the two. There’s only one restaurant that serves the best pizza in the world, and it’s around every corner. It doesn’t matter in New York.

That’s why David is so drawn to the city. That’s why he’ll always try to come back. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters here. Nothing important, anyway. Like the theatres that line Broadway, everything feels so huge and definitive when you’re inside, dark and escaping to other worlds. The lights and the music and the stories mean everything when you’re there, yet there’s not a single place elsewhere in the world where it _matters_.

Sometimes, for fractions of moments, David wonders if he just tells himself that to make everything feel better. By acknowledging that existence here can be hollow and cold, he doesn’t have to beat himself up every time he shivers. He just leans back and lets New York happen to him, chasing pride and accomplishment and all the other baseball cards of his career without stopping to catch his breath or, God forbid, wonder why he’s trying so hard to feel.

And if trying to feel is his aim here, then he’s pretty proud of himself right now.

The gravelly concrete steps are freezing and bumpy beneath him, the ridged pressure almost a relief under his thighs after the warm, stifling slipperiness of the club inside. His shoes are chafing the balls of his feet, but he hasn’t the coordination to reach down and take them off, so he just sits and relishes in the burn of it. And oh God, his _head._ It’s rocking and lurching like a car peaking over country roads, like the sickly moment on a rollercoaster just before descent. He wants to vomit so badly, but it won’t come.

He knew the club was a stupid idea when Candy had suggested it. A “vapor bar” was the advertised description, a wide open space with holographic floors and buttery-soft leather seating. There wasn’t an actual bar, and no actual drinks; the alcohol and weed had been pumped through the air in streams of mist like a smoke machine, so getting drunk and high was literally as easy as breathing. There was a two-hour limit for patrons to stay there for safety reasons, but no one listened. Of course no one listened. Why would they?

He isn’t sure how it happened, the thing on his head that stings a bit more than the rest of it. The pain is concentrated around one particular spot on his eyebrow, and when he touches it gently his hand comes away red and wet. It’s just a little cut. Just a tiny little cut. And he’s annoyed at himself because of course Candy had a boyfriend, and of _course_ she invited them both here tonight, and of course David had to go and put his stupid hand in her stupid blue hair and the next thing he knew there was a blunt strike to his face and the holographic floor was right under his nose, more pixeled and fake-looking from this close up, and –

“Hey. Hey, can you hear me, man?”

David looks up. Or at least he thinks he does. His head is still moving at half-speed, his surroundings still blotchy and swimming like water dropped into wet paint. The street is crawling with people, but one of them has stopped. They – he…? She? David can’t tell – are coming closer, their head ducking beneath a navy blue baseball cap. David must still be sitting if they’re bending down to look at him.

“Can I get you anything? Do you want me to call someone for you?”

David forces himself to blink hard, and a face that matches the voice finally comes into blessed focus. This guy looks like a student, he thinks, and now he’s squatting right in front of David, forearms resting on some tragic beige cargo pants. He doesn’t have much to speak of in terms of eyebrows, but his forehead is furrowed in worry.

There are a number of things David could say in answer to the guy’s questions, but the only thing that comes to mind is, “You’re Canadian.”

The man seems to relax a bit, as though he’s got some kind of confirmation that David is somewhat conscious and isn’t at the start of a dangerous overdose.

“Yup. Yeah, I am,” he says calmly, shrugging his shoulders ever so slightly. His brown backpack jostles, and he grabs the straps and hikes it up a bit.

“Seriously though man, are you good? I can get you some water if you want, you don’t look – oh.”

And then David is sick all over the step. Miraculously it hits neither of them but the stranger shuffles backwards anyway, his lips clamped together in what looks like polite acceptance. He nods once, twice, then appears to make an executive decision and helps David up. David doesn’t protest and actually finds a bit of strength within him to aid the man by not just becoming a dead weight, though he really wants to. He finds his footing and brushes himself off, shaking dust and gravel off his baggy pants. When he comes to, he finds the stranger still looking at him.

“You still here?” David slurs.

David’s not sure if he regrets it or not, thinking maybe the man will take offence and leave David alone, but then he laughs good-naturedly and shrugs once more.

“Guess I am,” he says. “Come on, you should probably get out of here. Where do you live?”

David narrows his eyes. “Mm, not going home yet.”

The man looks at his chunky digital watch. “Well, it is 2:30. You should probably think about it at some point.”

David’s not sure how, or why his body is even agreeing to this, but they’re walking down the street now. He’s not sure, and he never will be sure, but he thinks he might have curved out of the eyeshot of someone vaguely recognizable at the end of the street. The tattered cardigan and mussed hair ring distant red bells in the back of his mind, but the stranger is talking to him and he forgets about every step behind him as they walk.

“…Was looking for somewhere to grab something to drink. I just got out of a bar and I’m feeling kinda shitty, to be honest, I think there’s a 24-hour café somewhere nearby –”

“I’m Canadian too,” David says.

His brain has just about caught up to that part of the conversation, from just before he vomited everywhere. And weirdly, he’s not embarrassed about that. Usually that’s the point in the night where whoever he’s with laughs at him or leaves, but David finds that for some reason his drunk brain is just choosing not to be embarrassed about it here. Even when the man laughs again, and laughs at him for being so slow, David isn’t embarrassed, nor scared, nor apprehensive. And the last thing he wants to do is take him home.

He just feels…nothing.

And it’s nice.

“I worked that out from the accent,” he replies, looking both ways as they cross the road and head towards a dingy café. “Ontario?”

“Mm. Yup.”

“Thought so. Me too. I’m kind of in the middle of nowhere, though. I usually tell people it’s Greater Sudbury, but that’s just to be simple. It’s closer to St. Charles. About four, five hours from, uh…French River? And Elmdale County, but I’ve never been there. Heard of any of them?”

David shakes his head, barely registering what sounds like this stranger’s nervous ramblings. “Nope.”

The stranger opens the door, which squeaks spectacularly. There’s no one in except for the waiter, wiping down one of the tables with a cloth that looks like it’s doing more harm than good. Tinny Muzak is crackling from the speakers and there’s an overwhelming smell of coffee that’s clearly far too strong for either of them, because they both wrinkle their noses. The way the stranger comes to his senses just like David does makes David realize for the first time that he’s a little tipsy, too. His chin is scruffy with a day or two of missed shaving and his eyes are tired. Not in any dark circles or puffiness, but David can see it. They’re just…tired. He feels it.

They sit down and Patrick orders three bottles of water, two for David and one for himself. He also orders coffee and gets the waiter to bring over a bit of gauze from the first aid kit behind the counter. He gives it to David, who dabs it over the cut on his eyebrow. It’s starting to scab already, so not a deep cut. It won’t need stitches.

The man takes a long drink of water. “I’m Patrick, by the way,” he says when he swallows, wiping his mouth.

David doesn’t say anything. He thinks this man looks like a Patrick, but only just. Maybe it’s the red hair making him think that. He has a little mop of chestnut curls that are slightly dishevelled with the time of night and the fact that he’s clearly been wandering the streets for a couple of hours.

“What brings you here, Patrick?” David says. “Do you live here?”

Patrick shakes his head. “I’m only here for the long weekend,” he explains. “I just graduated from York University, so I came here to, I don’t know, celebrate I guess.”

“School of the Arts?” David asks. Patrick knows it’s a joke, thankfully. He laughs again, and the sound is a funny thing. David’s heard it a few times now, and like three knocks on a secret door it opens a little well inside him and burrows itself down, warming him up.

“Schulich,” Patrick says. “Business school.”

David takes another sip of water, feeling the room come into a bit more clarity. His head clears of the last of the disgusting club vapors and he meets Patrick’s eye. “Congratulations,” he says dryly.

Patrick smiles. “Thanks.”

“So what’s with the mountaineering gear tonight, then? And did you lose your friends? That can happen a lot here.”

“No, I came here alone. Only I rushed while I was planning the trip so I accidentally booked myself a night short in the hotel room, so I kind of got kicked out and now I’m just waiting ‘til morning, I guess. I never usually do things like that, so I really pissed myself off. Went to a bar, walked through Central Park, now I’m here.”

“You chose to celebrate your graduation by coming to a city you’ve never been to, without any clear plan, by yourself?”

Patrick looks almost embarrassed. “Uh…yes? Yeah. I guess I’m gathering momentum before the big party back home.”

That explains the rambling, David thinks. And the slight impulsive edge that Patrick seems to have. There’s something in him that David thinks Patrick might be trying to let free, but it’s just not coming out quite right.

“Strange choice of words,” David says. The coffee they ordered arrives at the table and the smell of cheap beans and caffeine fills his nose.

Patrick takes a sip, grimaces, and looks at David. “Oh?”

“Yeah, ‘momentum’. Like you’re bracing yourself to go home.”

“No, it’s not that,” Patrick says quickly. “I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. I am.”

Patrick lowers his head to meet the rim of his cup again, lapping out at the foam and blowing on the hot drink. Before he takes another sip, another small, affirming, “I am” slips out from between his lips.

“I do it too,” David says. “It’s fine.”

“Do what?”

“Brace myself to go home.”

Patrick laughs through his nose, and it sends a tiny ripple across the surface of his coffee. “I already said, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m just…taking a bit of time to myself.”

David breathes in and out heavily. “I’m going to do that soon,” he says. “I’ve just bought a penthouse in Shinjuku Gyoen.”

“I’m assuming that’s Japan?”

“Tokyo, yeah,” David says, and he can’t help tilting his chin just a little, dragging a feather-light finger across his jaw. Preening just a little bit. Showing off. Patrick looks…mildly impressed, at most. Even indifferent. “I’ll be going for nine months. I’ve booked myself a life coach and some of the restaurants nearby already know I’ll be arriving, so they can deliver shiitake and sashimi to my door once a week.”

“Nice,” Patrick says. And that’s it.

There’s a stretch of silence in which David sips his coffee and Patrick sips his coffee and neither of them enjoy it, but they have to because it’s what New York at night is giving them. If they’d just walked two more blocks down the road they might have been enjoying the best cup of coffee they’ve ever had in their entire lives, but they decided to come here instead.

“I never asked what was going on back at the club,” Patrick says. “How did you get that cut on your eyebrow?”

David shrugs. “Got pushed,” he says conversationally. With the alcohol rapidly leaving his system, he can see it and feel it in more clarity now; the look of anger and hurt on Candy’s boyfriend’s face, the people filming it – and God, he already knew that that would end up on Tattle Life tomorrow – and the way David had thought, for a fraction of a second before he fell, that he deserved it.

He explains it to Patrick as best he can, who frowns.

“Sheesh. I’m sorry, man.”

David bristles as that absurd nickname reaches its hat-trick. “Can you stop calling me man, please?”

Patrick’s eyebrows raise. “Shit, sorry – are you, um, are you not a man, or…?”

“No I am, but I just don’t like it.”

David is used to telling people what he wants and what he doesn’t want. And the people around him are used to it too, so he shouldn’t feel bad when Patrick shrinks a little, but he does. He wants to take it back, but he says nothing.

Patrick looks like he doesn’t belong here. Like he doesn’t _want_ to belong here, even if he’s only here as a tourist for three days. But he’s trying his best. (David knows the feeling.)

Patrick looks like he wants to be fishing with his dad on Lake Huron or relaxing with wine and vinyls in a house that’s comfortable and warm and his. His expression is more in focus than before and he’s looking at the bustle of the city outside with a wide, brown-eyed awe, bright and ridiculous. It makes him look more like a freshman than a recent graduate, and for a strange punch of a moment David thinks about how unworthy the city is of those eyes, of that gaze. There’s a strange kind of beauty in them that holds more than all David’s years in the city combined. He hopes Patrick doesn’t meet his eye and show him everything he’s going to keep missing for the rest of his life.

His phone buzzes. Patrick is quietly scrambling for new conversation leads, telling David absentmindedly about how he went to the Museum of Natural History and how he saw _Cabaret_ yesterday but David isn’t listening anymore, can’t be listening because it’s Alexis texting him and she needs help.

“Sorry, Patrick, I’m gonna have to go,” David mumbles, ignoring the headache that’s coming on and the sleep that he craves, already mapping his route to JFK in his head. He stands up and takes his wallet off the table.

“Wait!”

And there’s a fraction of a moment where Patrick’s hand catches David’s jacket – well, it’s more the pad of his index finger caught in a tiny crook in the fabric, but David still feels it more strongly than he’s felt the touch of a thousand lovers in the past five years.

“Wait. I don’t think I caught your name,” Patrick says.

David looks at him. He wants to say it; he wants to say the name, and its accompanying surname. The name that has filled him both with pride and embarrassment depending on the circumstances. The name that is his key to the city, his password. It’s how he makes friends. It’s how he loses them. God, he’s so tired.

“No, you didn’t,” David says. And he unhooks his jacket from Patrick’s finger, making sure not to touch his hand, and he leaves.

Such an infinitesimally small thing, to not touch his hand. The most insignificant of moments in the grand scheme of his life, in this iced-up champagne bucket of a city, this city that’s made of so much and so many and listens to no one at all. It’s just a butterfly wing.

But…if he had.

If he _had_ , then he might never have forgotten that touch. It might have struck him almost ten years later, like the world coming into technicolor, when he shook the hand of a snarky, impatient businessman. Clever and beautiful and snippy. Sure of himself but so achingly unsure. If he had touched his hand, David might have thanked him for what he had done all those years ago, and wouldn’t have even _called_ him impatient or sure. If he had touched his hand, their journey might have started long ago.

David makes his way outside, breathing in shortly against the sharp gusts of wind. He glances down at the way they came. He can see the club in the distance. He thinks about the man he’d seen just before Patrick started talking to him, and realises with a gut-churning chill that it was Sebastien. And Sebastien hadn’t seen him. If he had, he might have talked to David, and David might have been persuaded to fall into another cycle of betrayal and pain, four months or maybe more. And he wonders where Patrick might have been going, what might have been circumvented by his slight step to the left, the bend of his head as he spoke to David. The two lost boys, ones who would one day know each other again, but prevented from remembering it by the non-touch of a hand. It was a small meeting, but one that leaves David feeling a little more whole, a little more real that night, as he makes his way to JFK with a shock blanket and an inhaler. He reckons his night was saved, just a little bit. And maybe he was saved a little bit too, even if he doesn’t know it. And never will know it.

In so many more ways than one, their paths crossed at the right time.

**Author's Note:**

> \- I hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you thought. Sorry for the angst, but at least we know where they both end up :)


End file.
